Review: No Way Rosé – Rose Callaghan

Do you like wine? Do you like charming, cheeky comedy? Then chances are you will also like Rose Callaghan’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival show No Way Rosé.

No Way Rosé is the third of Callaghan’s puntastic titles, after Will You Accept This Rose and Rose Before Hoes. Like her previous shows, the title is pretty indicative of Callaghan’s comedic style as light and cheeky with a focus on love and relationships (though the show does contain very few puns). Callaghan has a classic stand up style and a strong base of observational comedy.

Her use of the word ‘like’ is frequent, functioning like punctuation in Callaghan’s speech. The discursive nature of Callaghan’s style, fed in part by her ADHD and nurtured through good comedic nous, lends a friendly air to already relatable material. She covers pretty safe topics such as dating, woven into anecdotes and brief stories from the comedian’s life. There’s no neat narrative here, instead Callaghan delivers solid, self-contained stories in short, sharp comedic bursts, occasionally interrupted by a meandering comment or stray thought. It’s candid but light (well, by light by a millennial’s standards), as Callaghan bounces from dating to hipster stereotypes to mental health issues with charm and sass. She’s open and to the point, anchoring her punchlines around her own truths, which is part of what makes it so relatable. If you’re after something thoroughly funny and familiar this Melbourne International Comedy Festival, sink a saavy b with your mates and head along to No Way Rosé.

No Way Rosé is on at 6pm at the Forum Theatre until 22 April as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Tickets are available from the Forum box office or via the MICF website.